Allen L Roland

Greenpeace hangs banner with picture of Obama on Mount Rushmore

Greenpeace's obvious message to Obama is we honor Rushmore's four giants of American Presidential history for their solid principles and leadership ~ not necessarily their political skills. President Obama should take heed that America now needs, more than ever, a man of firm principles and leadership versus another accomplished unprincipled politician :

Where have you gone, Barack ?
You swayed millions of Americans with your impassioned promise of government truth and transparency, single pay health insurance, clean energy and withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and you have reneged on all of these promises for political reasons.

Americans have endured eight long years of unprincipled leadership under the Bush / Cheney administration where the politics of fear and greed completely submerged the principles of truth, fairness and transparency.
We saw the country brought to its knees, both morally and economically, by two unprincipled, yet still unpunished, politicians who literally shredded our beloved Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Where have you gone, Barack ?
Or were you already philosophically joined at the hip with the Bush administration and the global elite ?
Millions of Americans, including myself, voted for real change in 2008 and voted for a man of apparent integrity with strong progressive beliefs and principles.

Were we wrong, Barack ?
Have you succumbed to the fatal attraction of power and slowly begun the slide to the dark side by continuing to endorse Bush's illegal spying program and not prosecuting our illegal torture perpetrators ?
Have you decided that politics trumps principles by endorsing the building of 100 nuclear plants powered by bomb grade plutonium 239 in reactors ~ so that you can pass a seriously flawed climate change bill and claim a political victory.

The Guardian, UK, reported on July 8th that your administration endorsed a revival of America's nuclear industry Wednesday in an effort to build forward momentum for climate change legislation before the Senate ~ " The endorsement of a nuclear revival ~ a generation after the last reactor was commissioned ~ suggests the Obama administration is open to further compromises as it seeks to find a path through the Senate. The House of Representatives narrowly passed a climate change bill late last month." http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/08/nuclear-power-obama-us
But are these compromises or really unprincipled politics particularly when regarding nuclear power ?

Informed sources tell me that Bomb grade Pu 239 has never been used in any reactor on the planet. DOE ran a test, a few years ago, with three Duke Company reactors in the South. It was to be a full reactor core cycle lasting 4 years.

The Operators with NRC approval killed the test 2 years into the project a few months ago because the Zirconium reactor core was "growing," or expanding with the higher temperature of the Pu 239 pellets.

Duke Operators did a frantic Emergency shutdown, jerked the experimental Pu 239 reactor cores out of the reactor and replaced them with U235 reactor cores.

The problem was that the control rods would not fit the growing reactor core holes. If they had continued, they were looking at another Three Mile Island or Chernobyl.

The next test will not be able to start till 2018. It is a four year test.The corporate bigwigs who are on the boards of directors of the nuclear utilities want the bomb grade ( Intense burning ) Plutonium 239 fuel because they think they will make more money ~ regardless of the risks. ( Sound familiar ? )

As such, the political pressure is evidently coming from the Presidential level to burn the plutonium 239 in reactors.

Weapons lab scientists are skeptical of any effort to use bomb grade plutonium 239 in reactors. This stuff is really dangerous !

So a Perfect Storm is developing ~ a Plutonium 239 storm. The rich "contributors" push the politicians, who push the DOE bureaucrats who push the scientists who say " You want us to do what ? " and whisper to those who will listen "You have got to stop this."

In the history of nuclear weapons ~ science has rarely trumped politics ~ and this is where principles will outweigh politics if President Obama rises to the occasion.

If he doesn't he will be putting the whole country at risk as well as his re-election chances in 2012.

Greenpeace USA deputy campaigns director Carroll Muffett correctly sums it all up ~ "If President Obama intends to earn a place among this country's true leaders, he needs to show that courage, and base his actions on scientific reality rather than political convenience."

Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2009/07/11.html

Freelance Online columnist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews and speaking engagements ( allen@allenroland.com )
Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

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Allen Roland’s weblog: http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/
Website: www.allenroland.com
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